Review and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 28. (7/12/1906)

Review and Herald

Jul 12, 1906

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 12, 1906

Our Publishing Work

By Editor

The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it. Psalm 68:11.

See last paragraph on this page for instructions where to order.

WITHIN the past few weeks, the Review and Herald has received orders for 1,235 copies of “Christ in Song,” 2,100 of “Bible Readings,” 1,108 of “Daniel and the Revelation.” We have also received orders for 65 prospectuses for “Bible Readings,” 18 for “Daniel and the Revelation,” and 47 for “Great Controversy.” We are especially pleased with the recent demands for prospectuses. It looks as if somebody was going to work.

EVERY person professing faith in the second coming of Christ, and through the inspiration of that faith desiring to do something for humanity, should secure a copy of “Pointers to Success.” This booklet of 72 pages is the fruit of long experience and observation in several countries, amid varying circumstances, and is therefore filled with excellent suggestions for all who are seeking to know how to render better personal service in saving souls. It will do any one good to read it. It is rich in thought and sound in practise. Price, only ten cents, post-paid.

IN South Dakota, during the month ending May 31, nine agents for our subscription books have worked 1,389 hours, and secured 429 orders valued at $1,206.25. Counting twenty days to the month, this would mean $6.70 for the average day’s work of 7½ hours. In addition to the subscription books sold, $84.15 worth of helps was sold, which would bring the average total sales per week to over $35. These figures are only the average taken from the total. Some agents did not report full time, so the returns of those putting in the most time are, of course, the largest. The Lord is good pay. It is a mistake to imagine that an active, consecrated man or woman can not make a living selling the books containing the message for this time.

WONDERFUL achievements have been made in the perfecting of the fountain pen. Fountain pens have now become a practical and useful article among all classes and professions. The Waterman Company offer to duplicate in their fountain pens the writing qualities of any steel pen manufactured. A recent invention added to the Waterman fountain pen, known as the “spoon feed,” removes all possibility of blots. These little spoons hold the ink in check until the action of the pen requires it, and flow the ink promptly and evenly the instant the pen touches the paper, removing the possibility of spilling the ink by the common thrusting of the pen against the hand or otherwise to start the flow of the ink. Another invention added to the Waterman pen is the “clip cap,” joined to the cap of the pen to securely hold it in the pocket. The price of the standard pen, having all the latest improvements, is $2.75. Without the “clip cap,” $2.50. We also handle other styles, guaranteed by their makers, with a greater capacity for ink, decorated holders, larger pens, etc., at higher prices. Address Review and Herald Publishing Association.

A STRANGER recently wrote to Liberty to thank its editors for “the glorious principles set forth in the April issue.” He wished the magazine “Godspeed,” and pledged his hearty support in the promulgation of the principles it advocated. This man said he just happened to buy a copy of a boy who was selling it, and that he felt more thankful than he could express for the knowledge of the fact that there were those who felt the importance and value of liberty enough to put forth such a sound, clean-cut magazine. There are thousands just like this man, and thousands more who could be made to realize the importance of the fundamental principles of religious liberty as he does. Who will, therefore, help to sell Liberty, that others may have its benefits?

THE second number of Liberty will bear date of July, and will be ready for mailing when this issue of the REVIEW reaches our readers. The magazine is published quarterly, the first number being issued in April. Though an announcement of the publication of Liberty was not made until March, when the busy season was just beginning, 45,000 copies of the first number were circulated during April, May, and June, and the publishers have received frequent requests to keep this first number in print, so it can be secured when desired to give a clear statement of the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty. In the second number of Liberty the important question, Are Sunday laws essential to good government? is prominently considered. The titles of some of the articles are as follows: Sunday Laws and Good Government; Does the Sabbath Need Protection? State Sabbath Versus the Divine Sabbath; Recent Sunday Crusade Developments in Pennsylvania; Do Working Men Need Sunday Laws? The Lesson of the California Earthquake; A Rejoinder; A Modern Christian City; The Question of “Whose Ox?” Things Move; Christian Liberty; Notes on Current Religious Legislation; Man in the Place of God; The Railway Rate Bill and the Sabbath; Sunday Legislation in Louisiana; The Present Church Federation Movement—What Does it Mean? What Will Save the Nation?

Single copy per annum, including extras, 25 cents; single copy of regular issues, 5 cents; single copy of an extra, according to size; five or more copies a year to different addresses, one order, 15 cents a copy; ten or more copies a year to one address, one order, 15 cents a copy; twenty-five or more copies of any one issue, one order, one address, two and one-half cents a copy.

Orders for any publication mentioned on this page may be sent to any conference tract society or to Review and Herald Publishing Association, Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C., or Battle Creek, Mich.

Also Pacific Press Publishing Company, Mountain View, Cal.; Portland, Ore.; Kansas City, Mo.; Southern Publishing Association, Nashville, Tenn., and Fort Worth, Tex.

The Great Problem

By Editor

Editorial

The Great Problem

WE are called upon to solve the great problem of reaching the people of the whole world with a warning message—a message which is to prove a savor of life or a savor of death to the human family. We are to proclaim the gospel of the soon-coming Saviour to all people and to prepare a company for translation. Through the agency of the living preacher, the Bible worker, the medical worker, the teacher, and the canvasser—through every divinely ordained means we are to make known the truth which we have received. We must declare the message whether men will hear or whether they will forbear. All departments of our work should be organized as contributing agencies to the solution of this great problem—how to proclaim the third angel’s message to all the world in this generation. All heaven is interested in this movement, and divine power is pledged to those who will be laborers together with God in finishing this work. O for that consecration which shall not count life dear, if only this great problem may be solved! There must be delay no longer.

Abana and Pharpar

WHEN Naaman the Syrian was told to wash in Jordan seven times for the cleansing of his leprosy, he was angry and inquired, “Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean?” But when Naaman was willing to obey the instruction, “his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.” There is a great tendency now to substitute some human method for the divine plan of salvation through faith in the crucified and risen Christ. Education and environment are the Abana and Pharpar of modern Damascus, and they are thought to be better than the new birth. The result is that sin is hidden rather than healed, until after a time it refuses all restraint and is revealed in outbreaking crime. There is no remedy for the leprosy of sin except the original gospel of Christ. The simple yet powerful means which God has ordained unto our salvation can not be discarded in favor of some human invention. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” Abana and Pharpar are not better than the waters of Israel.

Present Conditions and the Remedy

By Editor

CANDID papers and magazines, convinced by the array of evidence, are compelled to recognize such a departure from the old-fashioned standards of honesty and business integrity on the part of the leaders in the financial world as to constitute what one publication is pleased to term “the moral crisis.” The following paragraphs from the Independent (New York) are not the loose assertions of a pessimist, but the thoughtful utterances of a writer who still has hopes of better days. Note them:—

It is not easy to keep unimpaired our faith in the moral integrity of the American business community in these days of worse and worse revelations. The record of disclosures has already become appalling, and those who know what is below the surface tell us that the depths of iniquity have not yet been sounded. . . .

During the five years that have since passed [1901-’06], one investigation has succeeded another, and the literature of exposure has given publicity to all manner of disclosures, clothed in a sensational garb, that has arrested the attention of the thoughtful and the thoughtless alike. From the enormous mass of data accumulated, one generalization stands forth in startling relief. It is this: There has not been one investigation of corporate conduct, of the relations between corporations and individuals, of the conduct of individual men, that has vindicated the defendant; not one that has failed to reveal an amount and degree of wickedness far worse than the public had suspected.

In view of this terrible truth, it is vain to inveigh against the “muck-rake” man. The jester who suggested that the only legitimate criticism to be made upon the muck-raker was that he should have used a steam shovel, had the true sense of proportion.

As an explanation of this startling situation the Independent suggests the following:—

To-day we are exploiting, ruthlessly and wastefully, the most marvelous resources ever found at the disposal of any people. Unlimited capital employs a grade of ignorant, common labor, which existed formerly in the United States only in sporadic individual specimens. Gigantic power, on the one hand, human helplessness, on the other hand, together extracting the gifts of nature from the earth, have created fabulous wealth for men who have never been forced to toil, as the pioneer and the colonist toiled; who have seen in risk, industrial adventure, speculation and exploitation, infinitely greater potentialities than men have ever found in industry and thrift.

And these conditions have turned men’s heads. They have scared men’s consciences. They have created a nation bent on getting something for nothing; a nation unmindful of the duty of putting into the common store as much as one takes out of it; a nation, in short, of industrial and commercial gamblers.

The generalization which the Independent makes is indeed a startling one, and its use of italics to emphasize it is justifiable, but we fear that its explanation will not stand the test of a careful analysis. Mere conditions do not create character, but simply give opportunity for character to express itself. The combination of “unlimited capital,” “gigantic power,” and “human helplessness” do not of themselves change honest men into a nation of “industrial and commercial gamblers.” It is the glory of Christianity that the strong should bear the burdens of the weak. When advantage is taken of the opportunity to oppress the weak, and when the few, by unlawful combinations and by grinding the face of the ignorant poor, compel the many to fill their coffers with tainted money, the already existing lack of moral character is revealed. The Independent confounds revelation with creation.

There is only one sound explanation of present conditions. This is found in the Scriptures. We are living in the last days. These are the “perilous times” when men are “lovers of self.”

Of the rich in these times it is said, “Ye have laid up your treasure in the last days.” The “worse and worse revelations” correspond to the inspired declaration that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse.”

The Independent is hopeful for the future in the face of the terrible situation to which it confesses. It says:—

We are necessarily optimistic because the causes that have produced our wickedness can no longer operate as heretofore. . . . The diminishing returns of materialism will happily direct our thoughts to justice, mercy, and good manners.

This reasoning is superficial, and the hope is not well grounded. The cause of our wickedness is not the fabulous returns of materialism, and the diminishing returns of materialism will not create a higher standard of character. These outward circumstances are not the cause of either wickedness or virtue, but are simply the setting in which they may appear. It is the creative gospel of Christ, “the power of God unto salvation,” which is needed in order to change hearts. That standard upon which is inscribed “The commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” ought to be lifted up, and the message of the coming of the Lord as the only hope of a sin-burdened world ought to be proclaimed everywhere. The third angel’s message explains the present condition of things, and provides the only genuine remedy.

Catholicism and Occultism

THE Roman Catholic Church admits the fundamental principles of spiritualism, but claims a monopoly of the right to receive and to interpret the communications which may come from disembodied spirits. A writer upon this subject in a recent magazine declares that the Catholic and the occultist are absolutely one in recognizing the immortality of the soul and the actuality of communications between incarnate and discarnate spirits, and asserts that the Catholic Church accepts, though seldom without reservation, the messages or private revelations received by the saints in all ages, but at the same time he says that she altogether rejects and condemns the methods of modern spiritualism. He further affirms that she believes that the world beyond the veil is of unimaginable extent, and composed of an equally unimaginable variety of characters. In his own words:—

It is impossible, therefore, for any but infallibly safe-guarded persons to test with any hope of security the authenticity or truth of communications apparently received from that source. Setting aside the danger of human fraud, there still remains the far greater danger of spiritual fraud. The church believes so firmly that the character which a man takes out of the world remains his substantially in the next, and further, that there is in existence there a huge force of evil or degenerate spirits whose object it is to deceive and ruin the souls that God would save, and of whose capacities for impersonation and fraud we have no adequate knowledge, that she sees no security anywhere, even in the voices of those supernatural beings that speak with apparent reverence of holy things, unless there is somewhere a touchstone of truth to which these utterances can be brought; and this touchstone she claims to possess.

If the Roman Catholic system was based upon the Bible, it would deny the immortality of the soul and the conscious condition of the dead, and by so doing it would settle once for all the whole question of spiritualism; but being a perversion of the truth, it accepts the false teachings, and then professes to be able to detect any fraud, human or spiritual, which might be attempted in the practise of occultism.

It is plain to see that there can come a union between Catholicism, apostate Protestantism, and spiritualism. The Catholic Church is already perceiving the opportunity offered to it by the disintegration of Protestantism due to the infidelity of the New Theology. When the time is ripe for the acceptance of an outward visible authority both by an apostate Protestantism and a refined spiritualism, Rome is ready to supply the need, and the gulf which now seems to separate them will be bridged. And there is nothing which will contribute more to this result than Rome's claim of authority over the Sunday sabbath—an institution of its own. Watch for the threefold union. It is one of the last moves in the great controversy.

Protestantism, Catholicism, and Social Evils

By L. A. S.

MEMBERS of the Roman Catholic Church are taught that their church is the hope of civilization in its warfare with sociological evils, which they are told have sprung directly from the Protestant doctrine of the right of individual judgment in religion. This was the theme of a paper read at a recent convention of the Knights of Columbus, in Wallingford, Conn., in which the members of this order were told that they “are as truly knights of the church as were those brave souls who fought the heathen centuries ago,” and were exhorted to be prepared to “defend the faith” on all occasions. To this end they were admonished to acquaint themselves with the teachings of Catholic books, and to make it their aim “to see that Catholicism gets a fair representation in the public library” wherever such libraries exist.

It was stated by the author of this paper that “the divorce evil, socialism, lynching, and burning at the stake, defiance of law and order,—these are the direct outcome of the freedom of individual opinion, that refusal to lean on, or be guided by, the authority of the church, that self-sufficiency of private judgment in matters of conscience which are the distinctive evils that will destroy our civilization unless they are themselves destroyed.” The Knights of Columbus constitute one division of the forces which the Catholic Church is directing against these evils, and as they are in her view the direct result of the exercise of freedom of individual opinion in religious belief, it follows that her aim is to destroy this freedom by every efficient means, among which are ignorance, the suppression of the Scriptures, and the repressive power of persecution.

By implanting conscience in man, the Creator bestowed upon him the right of freedom of judgment in religion, since without such freedom conscience would be useless. And when conscience is destroyed or is made subservient to human authority, the individual becomes fitted to commit the very crimes against which the Catholic Church professes to be civilization’s bulwark. “Lynching and burning at the stake” is a dreadful evil, but it was when the Catholic Church had most fully imposed her authority over the consciences of men that there were more burnings at the stake than ever before or since in the world’s history. And the doctrine that the pope’s authority is supreme in both church and state, is a direct incentive to “defiance of law and order” on the part of Catholics in Protestant lands.

The Protestant faith does not rest upon “freedom of individual opinion.” It rests upon the Word of God, and upon that Word as interpreted by the Holy Spirit, and not by the church. “Freedom of individual opinion” and the right of private judgment, against which the papacy speaks so much, does not mean freedom to reject the Word of God or to give it any meaning that may suit individual fancy or prejudice, but freedom to be guided by that Word as interpreted by the divine Guide in answer to prayer, in the place of being bound by the human authority of “the church.” With the intellectual enlightenment that has come in modern times men have rebelled against such bondage, and the multiplicity of sects is largely due to the tendency of Protestant churches to be bound, like Rome, by creed and human tradition.

In the present decadence of the Catholic nations of the world, is written the truth regarding the nature of the papal religion. This is an open book which the whole world may read, and its testimony can not be offset by all the Catholic books that are now in print.

L. A. S.

How the Light Came

By William A. Spicer

IN nearly every community of believers we have illustrations of the gracious, and sometimes round-about, methods by which Providence brought the light of truth to souls prepared to receive it.

At our union meeting in the city of Parana I met a young brother from the Chaco region of northern Argentina. His family were the first Sabbath-keepers in that part. Years ago they received a French secular paper from Europe in which they saw an article ridiculing our French Les Signes des Temps for its advocacy of the nearness of the end of the world. The scoffing of the newspaper somehow impressed this family with the truthfulness of the doctrine of the coming of the Lord. The more they thought of it, the deeper the conviction became. They sent to Basel for our French paper and literature, and began to keep the Sabbath. Thus the Lord turned the scoffing opposition to the advancement of the truth.

The introduction of the message into the province of Santa Fe, Argentina, bears tribute to the fruitfulness of the good old plan of sending our missionary periodicals to addresses through the mails. Some one in Basel, in former times, sent the French Les Signes to an address in Santa Fe. The family receiving it accepted the truth, and so the good work began in that province, which now has several companies of believers.

An even more striking illustration of the care of the Lord of the harvest over the seed sown beside all waters is, perhaps, the experience which the Gaspar believers related at our Santa Catharina Conference meeting in Brazil. Some one of our people in the United States met a Brazilian, who gave the name of some friend or relative in Brazil, to whom German literature was sent. Thus a German school-teacher got into communication with the International Tract Society, and received periodicals and books. These he shamelessly sold for drink. He wrote soliciting books, and simulating an interest that was not genuine, only to secure material to sell for liquor. But some of the literature thus sold fell into good hands, and we heard more than one brother in our experience meeting thanking God for the light brought in this unusual way. Thus were the first Sabbath-keepers in Brazil led into the light in this out-of-the-way hill country, and they are still rejoicing in the truth.

Let us scatter the literature of the message up and down the wide world. There is a providence watching over the silent messengers as they fly. God's word shall not return void. W. A. S.

Itajahy, Santa Catharina.

Individual and National Sins

By L. A. S.

A “CHRISTIAN citizenship” institute is to be conducted at Winona Lake, Ind., by the National Reform Association, August 13-18. Among the subjects announced to be considered are, “Nations, Moral Beings,” and “The Forgiveness of National Sins.”

The National Reform theory of government is built upon the idea that nations are moral beings. If this idea be true, then nations, apart from individuals, are under moral law, and can commit sin. And if they can commit sin, they can also be pardoned and obtain eternal salvation. There is only one moral law and one remedy for sin, and the same remedy that applies to the case of an individual must apply to the nation if the nation is a moral being, and the same result must follow the forgiveness of its sins. To receive forgiveness of sins and be saved, a nation must, on this theory, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized. Are these theorists prepared to explain how a nation, apart from the individuals composing it, can be baptized?

There are, indeed, national sins, and nations have been punished by the Lord; but God punished such sins by punishing individuals for their individual sins, and when individual accountability has been reckoned with, there is no other accountability left. A national sin is a wrong practise in which so large a proportion of the people participate that it becomes national in its scope. Sabbath-breaking, for example, may be called a national sin; but God will punish it by punishing the individuals who have been guilty of this sin; and only such as have been guilty will be punished. But the nation taken as a government—the civil power—includes all citizens, good and bad alike; and if it could be punished as such, both good and bad would be punished with it, the innocent with the guilty, unless there could be a punishment of a nation as an abstract personality apart from its citizens, and which none of them would feel. The National Reform theory, however, does not contemplate the nation in the sense of an aggregation of individual citizens, but as a moral personality in itself, and holds that it must, as such, execute the will of God; that it must be a moral government. This conception is necessary to the National Reform program, which aims at national regeneration by the subjecting of the individual citizens to the compulsion of the civil power. Its program could never be realized by subjecting individuals to the pressure of moral suasion only.

God deals with individuals, and with them only. He deals with nations only Only individuals can believe on Christ, be baptized, and obtain salvation in the kingdom of God. God made individuals, and them he will save in his appointed way. He made a government, and that government he will perpetuate, but it is wholly unlike any of the governments of earth, the “powers that be.” There can be no such thing as governmental salvation. When the stone seen in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream smites the image (representing earthly governments) upon the feet, all the image is broken in pieces, and swept away like chaff, and the stone (the kingdom of God) becomes a great mountain and fills the whole earth. The National Reform conception of nations as moral beings is contrary both to reason and to revelation.

L. A. S.

Doors of Entrance in South America

By W. A. S.

The Lord “made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” And his providence has overruled in the dispersion of tongues and tribes over the earth, determining “the bounds of their habitation”—and all for the purpose of bringing the message of salvation to them, “that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him.”

I have seen here in South America the providential working of the Lord in preparing the doors of entrance into this dark land. There has been no flood-tide of immigration from Europe such as has flowed into North America. But in the middle of the last century, while as yet there was scarcely a Protestant witness in all the land, there began a movement from Protestant Europe toward South America.

It is interesting to see how the newcomers made their choice of location. The German-Russian colonists from the plains of Russia chose the level pampas of Argentina. The German-Swiss made their way into the hilly parts of Uruguay, where one finds prettily planted Waldensian colonies. In Brazil, a bright green, rugged country, most of the German colonists are from the German fatherland. And these colonies are found up and down the coast States of Brazil, from Rio Grande in the south to Bahia, northward.

By far the larger proportion, perhaps nearly all, of these German colonists are Protestants. They came with an open Bible, but with all the tendency to degenerate in the unspiritual atmosphere of South America. These little colonies have been points of light amid the gross darkness that Catholicism has spread over this land for nearly four centuries.

It was among these colonists that the first fruits of the third angel’s message in South America were gathered. God’s

providence prepared doors of entrance into Catholic America. And from among these colonists workers have been raised up who have a knowledge of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, while the German churches stand ready now to help with their means in sending laborers forth to carry the message to the millions of Romanists among whom they live. I believe God sent these colonists here to be lights in the darkness. Many of these have so regarded their presence here. And I thank God for the privilege I have had of meeting our true-hearted German-speaking believers in South America. And what the message has done for them, it is now doing also for Spanish and Portuguese brethren and sisters, won from Catholicism to rejoice in this great salvation and this “blessed hope.”

W. A. S.

Taquary, Brazil.

“THY Word is a lamp.”

Note and Comment

Is the Roman Catholic Church as intolerant to-day as it was during the days of the Inquisition? Most Protestants think not, and Catholics themselves, while declaring that Rome never changes, strenuously deny that their church would perpetrate to-day such deeds as were done to dissenters from the Catholic religion during the Dark Ages. Recently a controversy arose over this question in the city of Berlin, the nature and outcome of which is thus described by an exchange:—

Great interest has been caused in Berlin by the trial of Dr. Richter, a well-known journalist of that city, on a charge of libeling the Roman Catholic Church. “Dr. Richter’s articles stated that the spirit of Rome was as criminal to-day as it was when it first set up the Inquisition. He quoted modern Roman authorities, one of whom desired to see the stake revived for the burning of heretics; while another recommended the beheading of anti-Roman university professors. Dr. Richter maintained that Rome had learned nothing, forgotten nothing, and was as ready to torture and burn heretics to-day as it was when Pius VII plotted to murder Elizabeth of England, and Gregory XIII planned St. Bartholomew’s. One of his witnesses, formerly a Jesuit priest, came provided with something like a hundred volumes of Catholic history and theology, from which he showed that the Roman Church still held the doctrine that heretics were to be given up to the ‘civil arm’ if they remained recalcitrant. On the other side a number of Catholic ecclesiastical historians sought to prove that although the church has never disavowed the acts of the Inquisition, she is now filled with the spirit of toleration, love, and liberty, and that even in countries where she has her own way, there are no acts of intolerance or persecution. After a four days’ trial, a Catholic court and a Catholic jury, sitting in one of the most Catholic cities of Europe, acquitted Dr. Richter of the charge of libeling the church. They found that he had established a strong enough case to justify his criticism.”

The Sabbath and Sunday Communion

In opposing the tendency to hold the communion service on Sunday evening, instead of on Sunday morning, the Church Times (London) tells some truth concerning the Sabbath which is not always admitted by advocates of Sunday observance. It says:—

In a pamphlet put out a few weeks ago by the National Protestant Church Union it is asserted that the disciples came together to break bread at Troas “on the Sunday evening,” . . . The meeting at Troas “on the first day of the week,” which was continued “till break of day,” most probably began, according to our reckoning, on Saturday evening. The writers of the pamphlet quote passages from Socrates and Sozomen about the gatherings of Egyptians and inhabitants of the Thebaid “on Sabbath evenings,” as though “Sabbath” evening meant in those “historians’” mouths Sunday instead of Saturday.

And indeed, if it were now proposed to revive the seventh-day Sabbath—which undoubtedly the first Christians observed—this would not be a greater breach of the spirit of Christianity than the postponement of the eucharistic celebration of the risen Christ till well-nigh into Monday morning. Such Sabbatizing might be supported by much stronger arguments; and we can imagine its advocates pointing to the fourth commandment and to the practise of our Lord and his apostles, and contrasting this with the merely traditionary and ecclesiastical sanctions of Sunday observance.

In some pertinent comments upon these significant admissions the Present Truth (London), to which we are indebted for these quotations, says:—

Notice the statements made concerning the seventh-day Sabbath. First, it was undoubtedly observed by the early Christians. Second, God’s commandment, and the example of Christ and of his apostles, all support the Sabbath, and not the first day of the week. Third, only tradition and church custom can be quoted for Sunday observance. Perhaps the publication of these facts by the Church Times will lead some to see that, whether evening communion be right or wrong, a very much more serious question is whether the church has any right to break the commandment of God, and ignore the example of Christ and his apostles for the sake of a tradition.

The Only Day of Rest

It was a noteworthy statement which was made in the Canadian Parliament the other day, that “there should be one day of rest in Canada, and only one, and those who would not conform to this should go elsewhere.” The intolerant spirit which goes with Sunday legislation demands not only that all persons shall observe Sunday, but that Sunday shall be the only day observed as the Sabbath. The sentiment expressed by the words “and only one” in the statement above quoted, has not shown itself in the movement for ‘Sunday legislation in this country heretofore, at least not plainly, but it is there, and in due time it will be seen and felt. And in this, history is only repeating itself, for going back to the fourth century we find that it was decreed by the Council of Laodicea: “Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday, but shall work on that day; but the Lord’s day they shall especially honor, and as being Christians, shall if possible do no work on that day. If, however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out from Christ.” When the sentiment expressed in Parliament comes to prevail in Canada, and when other countries attain to the same level of Christian (?) wisdom, the expression, “Get off the earth” will have a very practical meaning for those who hold to another Sabbath than that prescribed by the state. And prophecy assures us that attempts will be made at that time to remove such people from the earth. The power which enjoins Sunday observance is to lay its prohibition upon Sabbath observance.

Reckless Use of Firearms

Regarding the reckless use of firearms in this country and a corresponding reckless disregard of human life, it is asserted by a writer in the N. Y. World that one person in every five in the metropolis carries a pistol. He says:—

Skeptical persons can have no better proof of the truth of these assertions than is contained in the record of the events of almost any day. Scarcely a day passes that an argument, an assault, or an alarm of some kind does not collect a crowd, and in the crowd can always be found enough pistols to put Deadwood to shame.

And do not think that New Yorkers carry revolvers merely for the sake of carrying them, for on the slightest provocation they draw them and begin to shoot.

Only a few days ago a negro, arrested by a policeman, broke away and ran up Broadway. A passenger just alighting from a car drew a revolver and began shooting at the fugitive. A man in an automobile drew a revolver and fired a few more shots; a man standing in front of a hotel joined in the bombardment, and the negro for his own protection stopped and allowed the policeman, who alone had refrained from shooting, to recapture him.

Members of a wedding party in Eldridge Street drank too much. A fight started, and in the twinkling of an eye, four revolvers were flourishing in the little room.

A policeman is authority for the statement that every other Italian carries a revolver, and some of them two.

Such statements go far to account for the record of ten thousand homicides yearly which stands to the nation's discredit.

Rescue the Perishing

WHAT if your own were starving, Fainting with famine-pain, And yet you knew Where golden grew Rich fruit and ripened grain? Would you hear their wail, As a thrice-told tale, And turn to your feast again?

What if your own were thirsting, And never a drop could gain, And you could tell Where a sparkling well Poured forth its cooling rain? Would you turn aside, While they gasped and died, And leave them to their pain?

What if your own were darkened, Without one cheering ray, And you alone Could show where shone The pure, sweet light of day? Would you leave them there In their dark despair, And sing on your sunlit way? — Selected.

Continue reading: MRS. E. G. WHITE